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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I built the 64bit kernel 3.1 for my Kubuntu 11.10 desktop optimized for i7. Here is the screenshot of the kernel in action

Feel of the new kernel 3.1 seems to be very exciting. Kubuntu booted to login screen within 10 seconds. (With default kernel it took more than 20 seconds to boot Kubuntu 11.10 unlike ubuntu 11.10 which was faster to boot)

Here is how I built the kernel 3.1 Ubuntu way (in short 7 steps)

In brief

Install build dependencies

Download kernel source and ubuntu patches

Extract and apply ubuntu patches

Create a new flavour and tweak kernel config

Modify Makefile for optimization

Build

Reboot and Enjoy

In detail

Install build dependencies

Open terminal/konsole and execute the following apt-get commands if you don't have essential build packages necessary for building kernel from source in Ubuntu

Wait for sometime (depends on speed of your processor). No need to tweak concurrency settings, which are taken care automatically. Install the newly built debs as follows after going one directory above

To test the newly built kernel, reboot and select the newly installed kernel from grub. If the newly installed kernel does not boot for some reason, do not panic, select the old ubuntu kernel and boot. (Grub2 does not wait beyond 3 seconds if there is no other OS present and very annoying, press escape within first 3 seconds to display the grub menu if it does not display) Follow this to know more about how to customize grub2 http://maketecheasier.com/mastering-grub-2-the-easy-way/2009/11/19

Monday, October 17, 2011

Today I spent my evening time in just installing/rebooting/restarting X server, installing xubuntu, installing ubuntu 11.10 just to get unity 3d right.

In the experiments, I learned a new thing about Ubuntu 11.10

It does not use gdm but uses lightdm

To stop the xserver, goto virtual console 1 (Ctrl + Alt + F1)

sudo service lightdm stop

To start the xserver, from virtual console 1 (Ctrl + Alt + F1)

sudo service lightdm start

Thought posting this may help someone having struggle with graphics drivers. Of course inserting/reinserting nvidia driver is trivial once the above is figured (sudo rmmod nvidia, sudo modprobe nvidia or sudo modprobe nvidia_current)

Finally after playing/experimenting for half a day, I figured that I am not supposed to mount tmpfs on RAM with noexec which caused failure in running scripts from RAM. Thank goodness I figured it finally

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Here is my rant. Ubuntu tries to be annoying, where is the checksum ?? I surfed mad across ubuntu.com to find a checksum of the file I downloaded

Sorry Ubuntu, this is irksome and I went to distrowatch to find out the release notes and release announcement. distrowatch.com displayed the SHA256SUMS link

Doesn't Ubuntu want people to verify their download, why does it make it so difficult to put a checksum in download page of Ubuntu. Won't its users benefit from verifying their download.

What if some man in the middle attack caused a download of some other iso and the unsuspecting user thinks it is Ubuntu. Doesn't security weigh more than user interface, perhaps Ubuntu has seen a paradigm shift and I need a paradigm shift

See Ubuntu, your own sibling Kubuntu, Kubuntu explains beautifully about verifying the download along with easy access to checksums